Just The Fax

Each evening, at the beginning of his shift, sysadmin pilot fish meets with his boss to discuss systems status and what needs to be done that night. Fish is just sitting down for the nightly meeting one evening when the boss's phone rings.

"He picks it up gingerly and holds it away from his face," says fish. "As a telltale fax signal beeps loudly through the receiver at us, he yells,

'Hello! Hello!' several times and then slams it back onto the receiver."

After a few more minutes of work, the phone rings again, and the whole process repeats.

"This has been happening all day," exasperated boss tells fish. Then he excuses himself and leaves the office for a minute or so. As soon as returns and starts working with the fish once more, the phone rings again. "He picks it up," fish says. "It beeps. He yells. The phone slams down. We go back to work."

It happens again, and again-and each time the boss excuses himself to leave the room.

Finally, fish gets curious. "On one of his out-of-office excursions, I walk to the door and watch him walk purposefully down to the end of the long hall, where he disappears into an office, reappears a few moments later and strides back."

And as he reenters the office, he complains to fish, "Not only am I getting these harassing phone calls, but I've been to every fax machine in the office today, and I can't get one of them to send a fax out!"

And for fish, suddenly it all makes sense.

"After I helped him set the fax machine to dial the outgoing number- not HIS OWN number-he left for home," says fish, "eight hours of answering phones and faxing finally complete."